Get Your Sh*t Together (GYST) will show you a lot of the stuff you should have learned in art school… but didn’t. GYST isn’t concerned with producing slick, commercialized artists, nor is it some new age, touchy-feely ìfind your inner artistî crap. GYST gives you information and resources to help you make things happen for yourself without waiting around for some arbiter of culture to validate your work. GYST is a program for artists, by artists. It’ll show you bare-knuckled, practical strategies for negotiating the often-baffling terrain of the contemporary art world.

In short, it’s about teaching you how to make a living as an artist, and from what I understand it’s packed full of useful info. The 600+ page class reader (“chock-full of information, forms, resources, grant info and templates”) is supposed to be worth the cost all by itself. As extra icing on the cake, one of this year’s guest speakers is David Wilson, artist, curator, MacArthur Genius grant recipient, and most importantly, Founder & Director of The Museum of Jurassic Technology. If you’re interested, though, you’d better get a move on. There’s only 40 seats and I know for sure that at least four of them are already gone.